Author Susan Wingate goes to jail

Get The Death of Vultures

I've known author Susan Wingate for I don't know how many years. I've always considered her the nicest, wouldn't-hurt-a-fly, attractive, and talented woman on earth. She often Facebooks pictures of the gentle dear that graze her lawn out in the Pacific Northwest, and naturally, I'll leave a comment the likes of, "Get out the .30-.30, it's time to hunt Bambi." Something nice, cute, and sensitive like that. 

But there's a tough, hard-boiled side to Susan that just doesn't show itself in her books, like her latest soon to be bestseller, The Death of Vultures, it also shows itself in her willingness to place herself in dangerous situations just to get at the truth. If she's going to write about cops, then damnit, she's going to immerse herself with the cops. She's going to go to jail and hang with cons in jail cells who don't mind taking a piss right in front of her. She's a master story teller and she's got a keen eye for detail and realism that shows in her writing, and we, as readers are all the better for it.   

Now then, I would like you all to meet my friend and author, Susan Wingate.

 

The author...in jail

INSTALLMENT 1 – NOTES FROM A RIDE-ALONG WITH SAN JUAN SHERIFF’S SERGENT ERIC GARDNER

Date: 7/6/18, Time: 16:00 hours, approx.

Entered secure front area.

Scene: Sheriff Krebs talking to a male citizen approximate age 53, short, shaggy salt & pepper hair, unkempt but not dirty. Citizen was telling Krebs about an irresponsible pedestrian—a woman with a child in a caboose on her back who jay-walked at a busy intersection. Citizen says, “she should be arrested for that.” Krebs suggests he talk with town council. Citizen leaves.

Dispatch buzzes me in and tells me to wait. The deputy who will be my ride-along is busy feeding inmates and freshening water.

I get a learning curve sort of run-down: the lingo, the layout of the building, devices and equipment, and an understanding how incredibly busy these dispatchers, Kitty and Nick, are.

Kitty says, #105-1559, as she speaks with someone in her headset, then #105-1601.

#105 is a deputy. 1559 and 1601 are timestamps.

Six security/surveillance cameras sit high above the front dispatcher’s desk on the wall, each with a scene of the following:

1.                  The marina

2.                  The county map,

3.                  Separate video surveillance for holding cells 1, 2, and 3, and

4.                  Holding cell 4—the rubber room.

Four people wearing orange jumpsuits move around in three of the cameras, two men in separate cells, and two women in the same cell. One of the men is in the rubber room.

Surveillance of the marina zooms to the dock where some guy moored his dingy. There are speakers and as Kitty says, “all this guy’s earthly possessions.” They seem to have been expecting him. Say he’s come from Anacortes, nearly 20 miles away in a dingy. Quite a jaunt.

The druggy guy paces, leans, screams, paces more inside the rubber room. He crumples to the floor. “Excited delirium,” Nick says, then, “comes about when someone mixes heroin (an opiate) with weed. The two don’t mix,” he says. Then Kitty adds, “but weed and meth go.” I think back to my days of seedless pot called, Sensimillan*, pot laced with an opiate. I thought they went well together back then. Things must have changed.

The holding cells are concrete with molded furniture. There’s a drain in the floor for pissing into, and whatever. A thrumming stirs in my stomach. I can feel it. The druggy guy’s going to piss in front of me. Well, not in front of me. I get to experience the whole thing close-caption, on screen. It hasn’t happened yet.

Inside dispatch office, I notice a Ouija board in an Easter basket. The irony.

Nick states that only direct family are allowed visits to inmates. Twice Nick he says to someone on the phone, “I can confirm in custody but that’s all I can say.”

A woman (from somewhere else inside the county courthouse) says something about an NJA, a “non-jurisdictional agreement” (a medical statement that imminent death is expected) and my mind whirls back to my mother, when the doctor signed the same order for her condition.

After that, things got real, real fast.

*Sensimilla —  From the Spanish meaning “without seed,” this term has mostly fallen out of use in the modern day, but refers to the top grade of cannabis which has no seeds, as opposed to seeded schwag or mids.
• “The people said everybody wants to get some
They want the Sensimilla
And everybody wants to get some
“Give me my Sensimilla” –Slightly Stoopid, requisite stoner band

Susan Wingate is a #1 Amazon bestseller and an award-winning author of books that span the genres of mystery, thriller, romantic suspense, paranormal, inspirational and Christian fiction, fantasy, memoir, and writing how-to’s. Susan Wingate’s novels are recommended for teenagers, young adults, and for older adults who are young at heart! Learn more about her novels at: www.susanwingate.com.

You can also follow Susan on Facebook and Twitter.

Susan’s latest THE DEATH OF VULTURES is available for presale right HERE, right now! 

THE DEATH OF VULTURES will be released September 15, 2018 in both eBook and paperback. 

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM